Category Archives: Living With Books

As I taught Revolutionary history this past spring, it was hard not to be inspired by the struggles founding fathers went through in finding their way to the wording that now serves as the central spirit of American life:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Wherever you are, here’s to enjoying your celebration of Independence Day. Here’s to kids splashing in the lake, to families getting together with those they’ve been apart from. My boys and I will begin our road trip this week to visit family in North Carolina and DC, and stay at my parents’ house in Connecticut, built only 5 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. And here’s to those who can’t be with their families, as they serve to protect freedom around the globe.

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As for this little celebration of Living With Books, I post this picture to encourage you to check out the website forJuniper Books. The curated book display creating the American flag was designed by Thatcher Wine of Juniper Books, and shared by Random House.

What is Juniper Books? Fantasy job for all of us who love living with books: Thatcher has achieved some fame, curating custom book collections for individuals, designers, architects and hotels. He is particularly known for designing book jackets to create monochromatic displays or a thematic mural across spines of a collection. Sweet.

Read more about Thatcher’s work in this profile in the Financial Times, “Spine Tingling.”

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What about the fireworks? Check out this great essay by my writing friend Kasie Whitener on shopping for fireworks, “Light Me Up, My Dear.”

It’s January! Everyone is talking “new beginnings” — so what a perfect time for some fabulous children’s reading spaces in this month’s Living With Books!

For those of us who love books, reading is often a charmed and mystical memory from our childhood. We remember the first book we fell in love with, or a favorite place where we loved to read. It was a magical thing to get lost in the other world of a book. In these pictures, designers, librarians and parents create that sense of fantasy in reading spaces for children.

Is this all just cutesy? Is it just over-the-top catalog art?

Each month, I work with students on their independent reading goals and can say that, by sixth grade, at least a third of the kids come to me knowing how to read, but telling me they don’t like to read. This will be a challenge, as so much of their learning in the years ahead of them depends on reading. Plus, I can’t help feeling frustrated with them — as a child who doesn’t like reading most likely hasn’t hit on that one magical book, yet. On the other hand, I like to tell kids that famed YA writer Rick Riordan confesses he didn’t like reading until he was 13. For him, discovering mythology was transformative.

My oldest son now falls asleep reading every night — at 11, eager to dive back into the story he left off earlier in the day. But not long ago he hated reading — despised it, fought with tears running. Books were always present in our house, but buddy-reading through a couple great ones (Roland Smith’s Elephant Runwas the first slam dunk!) communicated that reading was a shared hobby in the same way we might watch a movie together.

Fostering excitement about books and reading has the power to transform a reluctant reader. For those of us who grew up Living with Books, the presence of books in our homes taught us early to expect them to have value in our lives. The charming spaces pictured convey that joy to children who are just discovering the magic.

This bedroom bookhut (or igloo) was designed by Ben Nagaoka. Topped with a roof of felted tiles, shelves of books form a cozy reading wall around a hidden bed. In a survey titled Hot or Not, Apartment Therapy features more pictures of the book igloo, inside and out.

Of course, designing for children’s books need not be anything fancy nor anything permanent. Simply including shelves or baskets of books in a children’s space allows room for their reading interest to grow.

For young children or toddlers: baskets or buckets put picture books in easy reach. Favorite board books can be kept by the bed for nighttime reading. Try Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Gorilla, or my favorite: Corgiville Fair.

As children grow, share their old favorites. Make room for new reading by gifting their old books to last year’s preschool or kindergarten teacher, or younger cousins.

For upper elementary or middle grade students, encourage them to get “great read” recommendations from their friends. If they say, “There are no good reads,” then ask for recommendations from someone excited about middle grade novels, like their teacher, librarian or me!

For lovers of books, their display is part of a home’s design aesthetic. This is no less true when Hallow’s Eve has haunting at hand.

Aren’t books the magic potion that reveal all the greatest spooky stories? The dark wizardry of reading a well-told tale, hunkered down under the covers on a blustery October night?

No surprise, then, to see books claiming their place in decking homes out for Halloween festivities. Welcome to this special holiday edition of Living With Books, featuring do-it-yourself tips for using books as you decorate your haunted manor.

Throughout the web*, decorators and crafters offer tips for decorating for Halloween, using books.

Prop open a copy of Edgar Allen Poe, open to “The Raven,”beneath candelabra draped with cobwebs and a silk raven lurking.

Damaged or cast-off books can be aged furtherby scorching their edges or dampening until they curl. Coffee or tea add the perfect aged cast. Paint covers black, or uneven brown (try shoe polish) to simulate aged leather or wood. Embellish with spooky titles — there’s the ordinary Spells and Potions, or get creative: Anatomy of a Monster, Forbidden Secrets, Rattling of Bones. Display on a drape of velvet or moss, with props like potion bottles and bones.

Use the loose pages of damaged books as background to Halloween artwork. Roll them into scrolls (tie several around a form to make a haunting wreath) or use them as the backdrop to silhouettes of bats, mounted in a frame.

Of course, don’t forget the best part: if you have them, be sure to put your best spook tales on display:

Leave out a tub of Halloween stories for entertainmentthroughout the season or a quiet activity at a children’s party.

Not really spooky tales? When stood together, spines of provocative titles are good enough to evoke your theme. Sure, think Something Wicked This Way Comes. But also: Manuel Puig’s The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion or Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits.

Age makes anything spooky. A vintage typewriter, old hat or leather bound books of any title turn spooky when mixed with a skull, flying bats or tumble of spiders.

In need of a graveyard tale? Try Nathan Englander’s Ministry of Special Cases or Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

Anthropologie steals my heart, dressing its windows with fanciful dresses made of words.

Middle of the week is perfect time to take a breather with pictures. Clearly my family was not alone in our love of books, as these pictures show imagination extends to fantasizing: If only I could dress myself in words…

Last summer, I featured a dress from a Dallas homeshow that had been formed from the crimped pages of books (link to my summer reading list article, here). At the time, it was one of the most-favorited pictures fluttering around the internet. How better to combine a girl’s two loves — words & fashion — than in a dress assembled of the two? Surely, this dress was unique. And yet… no. As these pictures show, our love of books has inspired more than one designer.

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This model — corsetted with a skirt of tumbling pages — was featured in the promotional slideshow for the Book Lover’s Ball. For more info and full photo credits, visit http://bookloversball.ca/

Photo taken by Lynne Byrne of a dress of books in an Anthropologie window. Bestill my heart!

Like this:

It’s Thursday. It’s been a long week. Perfect time for a photo break. Continuing the theme begun with my interior design mother’s statement that she tucks a little bookcase in every room (click here for first post), this week’s Living With Books is a bit of eye candy with books in fashion spreads.

Designing a room with books is an act of referential art: the mere presence of a book, without need for melodrama or emphasis, asserts the potential that whole, imagined worlds might, at any moment, unfold within a room. An elegantly styled room is perfectly punctuated by the presence of a biography on Frank Lloyd Wright or Cartier, or a tabletop perspective of the interior design of Charleston, Chicago or Jaipur. With that, the accent of books in a room is yet sublime.

But what of the fantastical?

How fitting is it to have a doorway through books — even a doorway made of books — when books open whole new worlds of possibilities?

My parents recently confessed a sort of “escape plan” they’ve been hatching as they edge near the idea of retirement. If they’d spoken in Mandarin and confessed a double life, I could not have been more startled and impressed!

Their nearby Manhattan is involved, as is Charleston (don’t get me started on how I love Charleston), but most ambitious is their plan to live in Paris for six months. Considering Paris real estate costs, I have teased that they could find themselves folded sideways into a 100 square foot atelier with a limited glimpse of daylight, if one were to climb a ladder and peek out beneath attic rafters. But, between you and me, I like to imagine them here, in this lovely flat I found for rent (at book-a-flat.com) during my continued hunt for rooms that epitomize this spirit we share, of Living With Books.

For the book lovers among us, don’t you love the authenticity of the books in the flat – as elegant as the room is, they look read, don’t they?

While my parents led us on tours of elegant plantations in the South, or castles and country houses in Ireland and Scotland, I must confess my spot for the elegance of decay. Look at the image on my novel project page and you will see how Havana has had its hooks in me for some years, tracking the neighborhoods a friend once had to leave. There were no books in the mildew and hurricane dampened pictures I have of current-day Cuba, but I can’t help be inspired by this iconic picture, below, of Hemingway’s home outside Havana.

Hemingway’s home in Havana – Living with Books

You might notice that, in picking great pictures of “living with books,” I love a room where books are clearly important to the inhabitants, but that doesn’t have to mean endless walls of books. In these rooms, as in the bookshelves my mom includes in each bedroom she designs, the importance of a little library is clear without overwhelming the room.

In my last house, I found that trying to display all of my books in one place went beyond celebrating the pleasure I felt in them. Instead, they became a weighty presence in the room. In concepts of feng shui, it is important to not have things stacked high and towering in a room — as they symbolize and affect your spirit as “things hanging over you.”

Viceroy Hotel, Kelly Wearstler

If a collection seems burdensome, especially consider thinning books on higher shelves. No reader’s pride is lost to spread your collection between more than one room!

To read the first installment of this series, click here. Or, I’d love to hear your own experiences or suggestions for the next installment in the comments below!

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